Spanish State: International Solidarity for the “8 of Altsasu”

It has been more than two years since a fight in front of a bar on October 15, 2016 in Altsasu, where two civil guards and their partners were involved, served as a pretext to accuse eight young people of this town of committing terrorist acts. This incident was taken directly to the National Court in order to turn it into a judicial set-up, which was accompanied by a furious media campaign by the reactionary media.

The intense and shameful police, judicial and media manipulation looked forward to criminalize these eight young people and falsely accuse them of following orders coming directly from ETA, and it has been key to justify a sentence that condemns them to a combined 79 years in prison. Adur, Jokin and Oihan have been in jail since November 14th, 2016 and Jon Ander, Iñaki, Aratz and Julen since June 5th, 2018.

The case of Altsasu is not an isolated incident, but a consequence of a justice inherited from the Franco dictatorship and a state apparatus that continues to hold hundreds of reactionaries and right-wingers in key positions.

Millions of workers, young people and pensioners have led these years large mobilizations against social cuts and attacks on democratic rights. In order to confront this movement, the right wing, the state apparatus and the parties that support the 78 regime have taken an authoritarian drift involved in the most rabid Spanish nationalism. This has led to employing thousands of policemen to harshly repress the Catalan people when they intend to exercise their legitimate right to decide their future, to the imprisonment without a trial of pro-independence leaders accused of a crime of military rebellion for placing ballot boxes in the referendum on October 1st of 2017, to condemning rappers, twitters and comedians to prison for offending the Church and the monarchy or supposedly “ennobling” terrorism, and prosecuting hundreds of trade union activists and left militants.

Meanwhile, the apologists of the Franco dictatorship placidly defend their discourse in televisions and the media, the fascist gangs act with total impunity, the rapists of La Manada are treated with silk gloves and remain free and corrupt businessmen and bankers who evict and extort thousands of families are protected by the judges and the system.

From Ezker Iraultzailea (Izquierda Revolucionaria in Euskal Herria) and the Committee for a Workers’ International (CIT / CWI) we are calling to launch an international solidarity campaign with the youth of Altsasu. Today it is them, but these police set-ups are common to stop the struggle of the workers and the youth around the world, and only solidarity and mass mobilization can defeat them.

We ask all the activists to spread this campaign:

Sign the resolution of support and circulate it to your organizations, associations and unions in every country.

Send videos and photos of support to take the solidarity as far as possible through social media mentioning on Twitter @Altsasugurasoak, @EzkIraultzailea and @socialist_world.

Participate in the campaign by signing and sending the following resolution:

The people who sign this statement want to send all our support and solidarity to the youth of Altsasu, their relatives, friends and to the Altsasu Gurasoak platform, victims of a police set-up in the purest Francoist style.

The eight young people from Altsasu have been the patsies of a campaign of the right- wing and the state apparatus that aims to criminalize the youth of Euskal Herria and all those who raise their voices against oppression. They are not the only ones. Justice in service for the powerful people has organized in recent years numerous judicial set-ups that have led to the exile and imprisonment of many social fighters, trade unionists, militants of the combative left, of independentist organizations and workers of culture, who are just defending the rights of expression, organization and manifestation against the authoritarian drift of the Spanish State.

We join our voice to those of the hundreds of thousands who have mobilized in recent years in the streets of Iruña and Altsasu, demanding to the Spanish government the immediate release of the eight young people imprisoned unfairly, the withdrawal of terrorism charges which are trying to impose again and again, the debugging of Francoist elements of the judiciary and the end of police set-ups.

Socialist Alternative is a national organization fighting in our workplaces, communities, and campuses against the exploitation and injustices people face every day. We are community activists fighting against budget cuts in public services; we are activists campaigning for a $15 an hour minimum wage and fighting, democratic unions; we are people of all colors speaking out against racism and attacks on immigrants, students organizing against tuition hikes and war, women and men fighting sexism and homophobia.